\n<\/p>\n
Three former DeepMind researchers who created an AI that beat humans at poker<\/a> have now applied the same technology to trading stocks \u2014 and the bet appears to be paying off. Their Prague-based AI lab, EquiLibre Technologies<\/a>, is now valued at $500 million after raising an undisclosed-sum Series A, TechCrunch learned.<\/p>\n The round was led by Creandum, and, although the VC also declined to disclose the size of the round, vice president Cameron Sellers confirmed that it was the largest single investment the firm \u201chas ever made in one go into a company,\u201d he told TechCrunch.<\/p>\n The common denominator between poker and Wall Street is that they are well suited for reinforcement learning<\/a>, an AI training technique where self-learning models are incentivized by rewards. According to Martin Schmid, EquiLibre CEO, \u201cThe nice thing about trading and markets is that the scoring is super simple: how much money did the agent make?\u201d<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t just game money. In partnership with quant firm Tower Research Capital<\/a>, EquiLibre\u2019s algorithms have been trading billions in daily volume across the S&P 500 and NASDAQ. The startup claims its agents have been doing well since their rollout on crypto markets in 2025, and now on stock exchanges, with \u201ca perfect record of zero negative months since inception,\u201d meaning they have finished each month with their investments up overall.<\/p>\n By applying its AI to quant hedge funds, the startup is in a field where automation is commonplace and, if successful, improvements can quickly turn into cash. That made the startup appealing to Creandum, Sellers said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe potential total addressable market of trading in the financial markets is one of the biggest on earth, and there are countless funds over the years that have generated quantums of profit that make most venture-backed successes look small,\u201d Sellers said. But he noted that EquiLibre explicitly defines itself as \u201ca lab first, not a finance firm.\u201d<\/p>\n Schmid and his two founders \u2014 CTO Rudolf Kadlec and CSO Matej Moravcik \u2014 don\u2019t have a background in finance, and it is not what drives them, he told TechCrunch. \u201cI\u2019m not doing this because I\u2019m excited about making markets efficient. I\u2019m doing this because we are all excited about building new things that have never been built before, and this is a lot of fun to build,\u201d Schmid said.<\/p>\n The prospect of frontier AI by by DeepMind alumni is an area of hot pursuit by VCs as well. Another recent such example is Ineffable Intelligence, which recently raised 1.1 billion<\/a>. Most of these are based in the U.K., but there are notable exceptions<\/a>, including EquiLibre.\u00a0<\/p>\n In the case of EquiLibre\u2019s founding trio, they were visiting PhD students at the Google-owned company\u2019s first international AI research office in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada<\/a> (which Alphabet shut down<\/a> in 2023.) While there, they built DeepStack<\/a>, the first AI program to defeat pro players at no-limit poker, also known as Texas hold\u2019em<\/a>. They also worked with professors who are now part of the startup\u2019s high-profile advisory board \u2014 including Rich Sutton, who went on to receive the Turing award in 2024<\/a> for his work on reinforcement learning.<\/p>\n To build their startup, EquiLibre\u2019s founders decided to move back to their home country, Czechia. \u201cThis is where we had a lot of people we had worked with, and there was a large Czech diaspora at Google and other places,\u201d Schmid said. \u201cThese were our friends, so we told them, \u201cHey, guys, we are moving back to Prague, do you want to join us?\u201d<\/p>\n That helped EquiLibre build its initial team back in 2022 and reach its current headcount of 25 people; but according to Schmid, that choice of location keeps paying dividends. Compared to San Francisco, \u201cIt\u2019s much easier to keep the good people here, because there\u2019s not a new sexy AI thing happening every two months.\u201d<\/p>\n Not that EquiLibre is the only hot AI startup in town. BottleCap AI<\/a> is based in the same building.<\/p>\n Still, this is one of the more notable AI companies in the region for talent. It next plans to scale its compute infrastructure, bringing online what it expects will be one of the largest compute clusters in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE).<\/p>\n While the startup also declined to disclose its total funding to date, Schmid said it previously raised two other funding rounds, with pre-seed backers including CEE-focused VC firm Credo, which also backed ElevenLabs and UiPath. According to Dealroom data<\/a>, Equilibre\u2019s $10 million seed round was led by Blossom Capital at a $140 million valuation.<\/p>\n Sellers confirmed that the Series A $500 million valuation was a big jump. But it also comes after the winds have changed favorably for reinforcement learning (RL), including in trading. \u201cWhen we started, people were skeptical,\u201d said Schmid. But now RL is the standard. \u201cBecause we started four years back, we believe we are ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n Still, there is a risk that the startup will get leapfrogged by competitors. Trading giant Jane Street, for instance, states it already uses RL<\/a> with LLMs, \u201cor whatever else we need to train good models.\u201d It also claims it has \u201ctens of thousands of high-end GPUs,\u201d while EquiLibre is seeking to squeeze more compute out of way fewer chips and \u201cget more from less,\u201d Schmid said.<\/p>\n Considering how profitable Jane Street is<\/a>, EquiLibre will have to play its cards well in order to reach its goal to be known as \u201cthe <\/em>AI lab in trading.\u201d But this isn\u2019t poker, and there might be no losers. Says Schmid: \u201cThis is not a winner-takes-all market.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission<\/a>. This doesn\u2019t affect our editorial independence.<\/em><\/p>\n